Yazidi Genocide by ISIS ‘on-going’, Captives in Danger in Raqqa – UN

A yazidi boy holds his sister in a playground in Sinjar region, Iraq August 2, 2017. Picture taken August 2, 2017 © Suhaib Salem / Reuters

On the third anniversary of the start of Islamic State attacks against the Yazidis in Iraq, the UN commission on Syria has warned that captive Yazidi women are in particular danger as the noose around Raqqa tightens and has urged the coalition to rescue them.

“The genocide is ongoing and remains largely unaddressed,” said a statement from the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, the body established six years ago to investigate human rights abuses in the conflict which has claimed over 300,000 lives.

“Thousands of Yazidi men and boys remain missing and the terrorist group continues to subject some 3,000 women and girls in Syria to horrific violence including brutal daily rapes and beatings. Some women and girls are being held in Raqqa city. As the Syrian Democratic Forces and international coalition offensive on Raqqa intensifies, reports have emerged of ISIL fighters trying to sell enslaved Yazidi women and girls before attempting to flee Syria,” the statement says further.

On August 3, 2014, Islamic State took control of the city of Sinjar in northern Iraq, a major population center for the Yazidis who number fewer than one million. After slaughtering thousands of predominantly fighting-age men, the Islamists – who view the Yazidis, who follow their own religion as “devil-worshippers” – enslaved between 4,000-10,000 mostly women and children.

“Yazidi boys were separated from their families, forced to convert to Islam and recruited as child soldiers. Many men and elderly women were also coerced into converting to Islam and used as forced labourers. Sites of religious and cultural significance to Yazidis were deliberately destroyed,”read a statement from four leading human rights groups dedicated to the Yazidis. It was released to commemorate the anniversary.

While the plight of the Kurdish-speaking minority received media coverage, little was done to specifically help the Yazidis. Over the last three years, some have escaped, others have died, with many found in mass graves. However, no specific rescue plan has been formulated to aid the Yazidis who had suffered severe discrimination even before the latest brutalities.

“The Commission recommends to all parties fighting ISIL to consider plans aimed at rescuing Yazidi captives and use all means available to ensure they are set free during on-going military operations,” stated the UN.

With Islamic State territory shrinking and a battle raging for their proclaimed capital of Raqqa, focus is shifting to punishing the perpetrators of the systematic atrocities.

“The international community must also recognize ISIL is committing the crime of genocide against the Yazidis and undertake steps to refer the situation to justice, including to the International Criminal Court or an ad hoc tribunal,” said the UN commission.

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Amal Clooney: “it is shameful that 3 years after the genocide began, no IS member has been held to account for it...https://www.yazda.org/?p=8643 

“The UN Security Council should immediately establish an international investigative commission to collect, preserve and analyse evidence of ISIS' atrocities in Iraq,” said the human rights groups.

Raqqa, Syria

‘She Bled to Death, Nobody Paid Attention’: ISIS Wives Share Chilling Stories of Life in ‘Caliphate’

Women who managed to break free from the clutches of Islamic State terrorists told RT harrowing stories of what they lived through, shedding light on the rampant violence, sex slavery and a bloodcurdling neglect for life thriving in the so-called “caliphate.”

Khadija, who came to Syria from Tunis to live in Islamic State’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa for three years, told RT that she saw plenty of cruelty and injustice, but no genuine pursuit of religion or Islamic law.

“My husband and I made a huge mistake by coming there. And I advise you not to believe those who say that ISIS is an Islamic state, which preaches Islam and Sharia and lives pursuant to the teachings of Prophet Muhammed and the Koran,” Khadija said.

The militants do not tolerate any dissent and opposition to their reign, she noted. 

“Everybody, who takes a stand against them, they behead. And people don’t know when this is going to happen.”

“They are not on righteous path. This is the state of tyranny and Satan. My husband renounced them, and told me to do the same,” Khadija went on to say, adding that she and her husband escaped Raqqa running south to the town of al-Mayadeen and then to Turkey.

But before she made her escape, the young woman got to know IS’s darkest side with its ever-depreciating cost of human life, and in particular, of that of the most vulnerable, women and children.   

“There was a lot of evil in the places where women live. Children were suffering from scabies, lice. When children were ill, they did not receive treatment at hospital,” Khadija said.

If women were found to be in violation of the strict code of conduct, imposed by IS, they were locked up in prison-like detention facilities by female watchers, put in charge of “women dormitories.”

“It was sickening to be there,” Khadija said, recounting stories of women in labor seeking help and receiving indifference at best. Women were routinely denied maternity care and forced to deliver babies on the spot.

One woman bled to death during labor after the dormitory’s superintendent refused to help her.

“That poor woman went to the garden, while bleeding heavily, stayed there till morning in a rainy and cold weather. Nobody paid attention to her. And in the morning her husband came, saw her body lying in the garden and passed by, without paying any attention, as nothing happened, as if [she] were a dog,” Khadija said.

In another case, a woman became crippled after her plea to be sent to hospital was rejected despite her saying that he leg was rotting. 

While it appears that for a lot of women the life under IS was a living hell, it was not uncommon for the militants to have a sex slave in addition to a wife.

According to Khadija, women who are not sex slaves, are not subjected to the so-called “sex jihad.”

“You go to the city hall and get married. If you have been married and your husband got killed, you just got married to another man,” she said. The completely different story is, however, when a woman is captured and turned into a sex slave.

As a sex slave, a woman is considered to be the property of her owner, to do with as he pleases, for instance, to sell or give as a present. 

“The wife and the other woman live separately. He lives with them in turns – one day with one woman, and the other day with another,” Khadija said, noting that despite their superior status lawful wives sometimes envy the Yazidi slave women.

“Many men love Yazidi girls more than their wives,” she said.

A 20-year-old, Nur Al-Khouda, originally from Tripoli, Lebanon, said her husband first joined a Salafi group where he was indoctrinated with IS ideology and left for Syria.

“He persuaded me that there’s nothing bad there and I trusted him as his wife so I arranged all the documents and I joined him in Syria,” the young woman told RT.

The slave trade is a booming market in IS, she said.

“They paid a lot of attention to women’s looks. They bought makeup to sell them for $15,000, the virgins were priced at $30,000.”

Young girls also became a mere commodity once they are in hands of jihadists, she added, recounting that the militants planned to sell a 10-year-old girl for some $10,000.

It was reported the girls as young as 8 are sold at such slave markets. Some 3,000 to 5,000 Yazidi women are believed to be held captive by IS as sex slaves.

Two London, Runaway Teens have Married Daesh Terrorists: Lawyer

File photo: British teenagers Kadiza Sultana, Amira Abase and Shamima Begum
 passing through security barriers at Gatwick Airport, south of London,
on February 17, 2015. AFP

PUBLISHED: 18:08 JULY 4, 2015 Gulf News
AFP

LONDON: Two of three teenage girls who travelled from Britain to Syria sparking criticism of the police response have married Daesh (IS) group fighters, the lawyer for their families said Saturday.

Kadiza Sultana, 16, and 15-year-olds Shamima Begum and Amira Abase left their homes in February and flew to Istanbul before crossing into Syria.

Two of the trio have been in touch with their families to say they have married men in ceremonies approved by Daesh and are living in and around the Syrian city of Raqqa, the group’s stronghold, The Guardian reported.

The newspaper did not identify which two of the three had got married at the families’ request.

Tasnime Akunjee, who represents the families, told the Guardian that the news had “caused a lot of distress.”

“It entrenches their lives in Syria, rather than in Britain. It erodes significantly hopes that they will come back,” he added.

The paper reported that the two teenagers were given a “catalogue” of men to choose from and that their husbands were in their 20s.

All three of the girls attended the same school in East London, Bethnal Green Academy.

They are believed to have followed a classmate who left a few months previously.

Four other girls from the same school have been given a court order banning them from travelling abroad over fears they too could go to Syria.

The girls’ families have accused police of failing to communicate information which could have alerted them to the risk that their daughters would travel to Syria.

Scotland Yard believes around 600 Britons have travelled to Syria and Iraq since the conflict began though about half are believed to have returned to Britain.

'About', 'believed' - in other words, they don't really know? Astonishing! 

— AFP